8 Life Changing Reasons to Ride a Bike

8 Life Changing Reasons to Ride a Bike

Riding a bike can transform your life. It doesn’t take much time or money to reap incredible benefits from cycling. Whether you ride mountain bikes or road bikes, here are 8 life-changing benefits of cycling:

Stronger Muscles and a Leaner Body – Cycling is one of the best aerobic activities out there that can increase your endurance and cut down body fat. Pedaling is also a great way to activate your glutes, hamstrings, quads, and hip flexors.

You’ll Burn Calories After You Finish Riding – After strenuous exercise, your body continues to need energy to repair and build the muscles. The body’s BMR-or the base energy level where your body operates while resting–is also increased, causing your body to burn more calories throughout the day.

Sleep better – We all know that exercise can help us sleep better, but did you know that in a study by the Stanford School of Medicine, insomniacs who were asked to cycle for 20-30 minutes a day could fall asleep in half the time they could without cycling? Exercising also helps you sleep deeper, improving how you feel during the day.

Increased brain power – Can cycling really make you smarter? An Illinois University study found that just a five percent increase in cardiovascular fitness can lead to a fifteen percent mental improvement. Improved blood flow to the brain, and the hippocampus (the memory center of your brain) can help you think clearer and faster.

Good for your joints – Cycling is considered a low-impact, high-resistance sport, meaning you get all the benefits of exercise without the damage caused by typical high-impact sports.

Network better – Cycling is a great way to connect with both family and friends, as well as your community. If you are just starting out, websites like Meetup.com, Strava.com or Facebook make it easy find riders at a similar level or popular trails near you. You can even get business done better on a bike. News organizations from Business Insider to the Economist to CNN report that biking is the new golf.

Reduce the risk of disease – Finnish researchers found that cycling can help ward off cancer. They found that men who exercised for thirty minutes a day were half as likely to develop cancer as men who didn’t.

Save money and the planet – Forbes Magazine reported that the average annual operating cost of a bicycle is $308. The average operatings costs of a car is $8,220 a year. In the United States, if American drivers replaced just one four-mile car trip with a bike ride each week for the entire year, it would save more than two billion gallons of gas. How’s that for saving the planet?

Sure, many forms of exercise can improve your health and help save the planet, but it’s hard to explain the way cycling can truly improve the quality of your life. So get out and ride for yourself, and see what pedaling two wheels can do for you.